Perdition
by deanine
Summary: Sometimes endings aren't as simple as they seem. Some cycles don't end. They just change and change and change.


**Perdition**

 **– Coraline Jones -**

A young women struggled ineffectually, strapped to a kitchen counter. Sharp metallic fingers wrapped around her throat, alternately petting and throttling her. A hulking arachnid-women in a frilly apron used a kitchen gadget (a sharply metallic melon baller) to extract the trapped girl's eyes. Searing pain leading to absolute darkness. Cooing to her and stroking the trembling girl's wounded face, the monster used sharp needles to affix shiny black buttons over the gaping wounds. It didn't hurt anymore. The so sharp needles slid through her flesh, cold and refreshing. The buttons settled in snuggly and she could see again, clearer that she had ever seen before.

Under her new eyes, the creature twisted and shrank, no longer a hulking monster. She wore her real mother's form, so near to perfect. "I told you it wouldn't hurt a bit. My beautiful girl."

Coraline jerked forward in bed, both hands flying to her face. No buttons waited for her. She rolled to her feet, careful to be nearly silent. Her roommate, Betsy, did not appreciate interrupted beauty rest. In the bathroom, she washed her face and took a long slow peer at her reflection. Her dark blue hair was trimmed close in a whimsical pixie cut, and her brown eyes were still highlighted by the liner she hadn't bothered to remove before falling into bed. Damn waterproof stuff did not like to come off without an act of congress. Forcing a smile, Coraline tried to shake off the hopeless feeling her recurring dream usually left her. "It was just a dream," she told herself. "You beat her years ago. Do you hear me subconscious brain? Stop with the rehash." Deciding against trying for more sleep, Coraline turned on the shower.

By the time she had had a bagel and a cup of coffee, Coraline was feeling more herself. She had selected her favorite denim jacket and pageboy hat to go with a pair of hot pink dangly earrings that almost brushed her shoulders. It was a stunningly original combination that just made her want to go out and greet the world.

Betsy emerged from her bedroom wrapped in a fluffy pink robe. Her tousled blond curls mostly obscured her face as she stalked to the coffee pot, zombie-style. "You have got to stop with the early morning ablutions. The hot water heater is behind my bedroom wall and it clunks and groans."

Coraline didn't bother asking her roommate what the heck an ablution was. It involved the use of hot water apparently, and she had decided to shower instead of going back to bed in the wee hours of the morning. Betsy was a linguist, or a doctoral candidate to become a linguist anyway. She tended to drop random vocabulary bombs, especially when sleepy. "Sorry, I'll work on sleeping later."

"Thank you." Betsy took a long slow drink of her coffee and smiled. "So what are you up to today?"

"Work," Coraline said, with an eye roll. "The greenhouse, not the art." Unlike her friend, Coraline had not pursued education past a four year degree. Technically she hadn't actually finished her degree, but who needed a piece of paper to be a sculptor? Since not-graduating she'd been practicing her art when she could and working at a local greenhouse to pay the bills.

"You're wearing that to the greenhouse? Seems awfully chic for mulching."

Coraline patted her messenger bag. "Change of clothes for when I get to work. I'm also planning some intensely satisfying flirting with the coffee house dude."

"Adam?" Betsy asked.

"Nope, he's on nights now. Blake is the current morning coffee guy." Coraline plastered a dreamy expression on her face. "He's very muscly. Want to walk with me and be my wing woman?"

"I'd love to, but the thesis of doom is waiting for me."

* * *

It was hard to grow up with a pair of horticulturalists and not pick up some skill at handling plants. Coraline had been lucky to find a job she could excel at, that paid halfway decent, and still left her enough time to work on her art. Today she was working the perennial bulbs-hyacinths and dahlias, lilies and tulips. It was the midsummer divide. The thriving flowers had to be dug up and split for sale. Coraline loved the feel of the rich wet loam, the green smell of the plants.

She lifted a healthy cluster of red tulips to the work table, using a sharp trowel she split the bulbs and wrapped them in moistened sackcloth. Someone else would finish the shipping packaging. A chill settled over her as she worked, a niggling tickle, a watched feeling. Coraline paused, her hands flat on the table. She looked up into a pair of malevolent button eyes.

Had she fallen asleep at work? Was this another dream?

The other mother shifted, no longer wearing her mother, Mel's, face. She became a short, slight redhead with too-pale skin and a dusting of freckles on her cheeks. "We need to talk Coraline. The dreams I send, you keep turning them to nightmares. Your hindbrain is still too terrified of me to allow anything else, but you were always brave when given the choice."

"The hunger has started to leave me. I'm dying like I told you I would without you, but the hunger cannot die. It is immortal and eternal. It knows you Coraline and it will find you. Maybe you'll forgive me then, for trying to give you a peaceful end, for loving you. Maybe you'll respect the trap I built and you escaped."

Coraline couldn't speak or move. The little woman caressed her face with cold, bone thin hands. "You would have been beautiful in buttons."

The moment passed; the woman vanished. Without a word of explanation to her supervisor, Coraline strode rapidly out of the perennial room and into the midsummer sun, anything to banish the feeling of those cadaver cold hands that couldn't have physically touched her.

She was losing her mind.

* * *

Over the next few months, the dreams stopped. There weren't any more waking visions, and no creepy monsters showed up and tried to eat her eyes. Coraline had almost put the entire thing out of her mind, when she realized she might be in trouble. Betsy had been giving her a look, part worried, part question for days before she just spoke up. "You're too thin, C. You need to eat more."

Coraline laughed and continued painting her fingernails. "Isn't there a famous quote? You can never be to rich or too thin? I'm not dieting."

"You're not? You aren't eating." Betsy, took a bite out of her tuna fish sandwich and gestured to Coraline's untouched sandwich and pickle. "I've been watching. You eat two bites of any one meal and put the leftovers in the fridge where they slowly mold. I'm your friend, so listen to me when I tell you. Eat your sandwich."

"I'll finish it, promise. Let me dry my topcoat, please. You're such a mother hen." Coraline stumped off to the bathroom, careful not to smudge her neon green nails. She looked at herself critically in the mirror, and her breath caught. She looked ill, her cheeks hollow; her eyes seemed too big in her face. Her favorite sweatshirt, always big and baggy, drooped almost to her knees. Coraline stripped it off, suddenly far less concerned with her nails. Her ribs were entirely too prominent, her stomach receding back toward her spine giving her figure an oddly skeletal look. She looked like she'd survived a famine in a third world country. How could this have happened without her even noticing?

"Coraline, eat the sandwich," Betsy called.

"Coming!" She threw her sweatshirt back on, hiding the worst evidence of her abysmal body condition. She had a sandwich to eat, maybe two. She snatched up her ham and cheese and took a large bite. "I might have two sandwiches."

"Have three," Betsy encouraged. "I've got to get to the research library. I need to run some errands afterwards. Do you need anything from the pharmacy?"

Coraline shook her head, still chewing the large bite. She swallowed it, and despite the slightly nauseated, full feeling it gave her, she took another.

"I'm going to bring you chocolates, fattening ones." Betsy waved, and rushed away with her very neatly stacked documents in hand.

Determined to finish her sandwich, Coraline took a third bite. She chewed and chewed but couldn't quite make herself swallow. Finally she just spat the disgusting wad of overly masticated sandwich back onto the plate and tried not to vomit up the bits she had managed to eat. "I may need a doctor," Coraline told the sad mound of food. "What's wrong with me?"

Despite her declaration, Coraline didn't call a doctor or even google her symptoms. Something held her in place. An old acquaintance manifested with a swirl of mist into Betsy's empty seat. The other mother gazed at the plate of food and shook her head. "The hunger is upon you now. First it hollows you out, baking down the soft human bits until you aren't yourself any longer. Your appetite will return, but it won't be satiable with food. You will need souls, preferably won through the ritual for best effect. I can teach you. We will be your servants now." More women appeared, all less substantial than their spokeswoman. "You'll need to build a trap."

"Get out of my house." Coraline rose quickly, knocking her chair over. Her brain had processed and rejected the apparition's words. Eating souls? That was crazy. "I would never do that, be like you. I'd rather starve to death than kill people to live. I'd kill myself first."

"Not just people, children are best, dear. I suppose you could end things now. You are still human enough to choose that, but the hunger never dies. It would just root again in someone else, someone else it had touched and tasted. Possibly your friend, Betsy; she's spent enough time around you. It might choose someone weak, someone who wouldn't build a good trap before the monster is master. A good trap keeps you alive, but doesn't let the hunger hunt freely. A good trap is a prison. Let me show you, while you're still you."

Coraline tried not to listen. She fumbled through her purse until she found her keys. She needed to see a doctor, and maybe a psychiatrist. Despite her trembling hands, she managed to lock the door and make it down to the street in a few short seconds. Outside in the sun and moving under her own power, Coraline could almost convince herself that everything was okay. But all she had to do was look at her skeletal hands and wrists, poking out of her sweatshirt to know how wrong that was.

"A doctor." Like many early twenty-somethings, Coraline didn't exactly have a primary care physician. She got her birth control at the health department, and she hadn't been sick enough to see a real doctor in ages. She dropped onto a bench and started searching on her phone. One after another, she called doctor's offices but no one could take her sooner than two weeks from now. One helpful receptionist had told her to go to the ER if it was an emergency.

Was this an emergency? Extreme weight loss and maybe hallucinations, definitely seemed like an emergency to her. Coraline found a bus stop and rode resolutely to the nearest ER. She wasn't able to stifle a bubble of hysterical laughter that made the other riders on the bus stare at her. She wanted to be sick, how strange. Better ill and hallucinating than possessed by a child eating monster, Coraline reasoned fatalistically. "Come on brain tumor," she muttered sarcastically under her breath.

When the nurse at the admitting desk asked her what was wrong, Coraline answered stomach problems. The woman directed her to a digital scale, and she stepped on nervously. Last time she had checked her weight she had been 110, a healthy size for a girl of her height and frame.

"Seventy nine pounds." The nurse shook her head, and gazed sadly over her glasses.

She thinks I'm anorexic or bulimic or some combination of the two, Coraline thought grimly. At least she hadn't mentioned the hallucinations to the nurse. She needed a medical workup, not a trip to the psychotherapy wing, not yet anyway. She was either sick or psychotic or worse and she'd rather rule out biology first.

Sadly, it wasn't a medical dynamo like you see on TV that came into her not-really-private-at-all curtained area. He looked to be maybe her age, with a hint of acne on his temples, and thick, black Clark Kent glasses riding down toward the tip of his nose. "Stomach troubles in curtain three," the doctor said without looking up from the chart. "How much are you eating, young lady? How many calories a day? Are you taking any laxatives or other medications? Adrenergics? Methamphetamines?"

Coraline frowned, and fired back in the same callous style. "Obviously not enough. I don't count. No. What? And no."

"HIPPA law states that any information you give me regarding illicit drug use is privileged. I can't turn you in. It's going to show up in the routine toxin screen if you're lying. Save us both some time and tell me now if you are taking anything," the doctor said.

"Hi, my name is Coraline Jones. I don't do drugs, unless we're counting processed sugar or caffeine. Nice to meet you." She thrust her hand out and plastered the fakest smile she could muster on her face.

"Dr. Gingles, nice to meet you." He shook her hand, and smiled a bit sheepishly. "It's been a long forty eight hours. They run you ragged in residency. I do normally have some semblance of a bedside manner. Why don't you tell me why you're here, Ms. Jones? You're thin to the point of emaciation, with no listed preexisting conditions. In this country, emaciated but otherwise healthy young women are usually taking elicit drugs or starving themselves. If you're not doing either, I need to know how you've gotten to this point."

"Honestly, doc, it snuck up on me. I've been living my life like normal, but it hasn't taken much at all to fill me up lately, a bite here, a nibble there. It didn't even occur to me that something was wrong until a friend pointed out that I'd lost weight. So I decided to eat more; only I couldn't. Two bites of a sandwich and I couldn't swallow the third. Maybe it's the malnutrition, but I think I might have had a waking nightmare or a hallucination or something today too." Coraline held up a hand to stop the doctor from commenting. "I promise I'm not tripping on drugs. But just so you know where my head is, I've decided that I have a brain tumor which I hope you're able to find and remove so I can get on with my life. Granted that diagnosis is from an art major/college dropout, but I wanted you to know what I've been thinking."

Dr. Gingles didn't say anything right away, then he pulled out his stethoscope. "I'm going to examine you and then we're going to run a few lab tests. I think some imaging is in order as well. If you have a brain tumor we'll find it, but that's not the first thing on my list."

"No, I bet the toxin screen is number one on your list." Coraline crossed her arms, not really disappointed that the doctor wasn't going to take her word that she wasn't on drugs. If she were him, she'd rule out mind altering substances too.

"The toxin screen is for other things too. A lot of the older apartments in this city still have lead paint on the walls, just for example."

"Doc, I don't do drugs or eat the paint off my walls, but keep thinking, I have faith you'll figure this out." Coraline took pride in the genuine smile she coaxed from the doctor. The man wasn't bad looking, light brown hair, tan complexion, dimples. Dr. Gingles slid his stethoscope over her chest and her woefully deflated breasts. It hit Coraline suddenly, how terrible she looked, wasted and wan. She had never been overly prideful of her appearance. She wasn't the type of girl that appealed to everyone. She had a quirky grace and style that made her memorable in a crowd, but she had never needed to enter a pageant to know she wasn't the most beautiful girl in the room. This not-unattractive doctor was seeing her at her worst, and she was suddenly embarrassed. "Anything interesting?" Coraline asked, determined not to show her discomfort.

"You're heart rate is a little slow. Not scary slow, but I think we'll check some cardiac enzymes jut to be safe. Now you sit tight, I'm going to admit you for testing. A technologist will be by to collect blood and then a nurse will take you up to CT. Can you think of any questions for me?"

"No, not right now. Doc, thanks for taking this seriously and not just assuming I'm a psychotic drug addict. I really appreciate it."

"You're welcome. I'll be back this way when we have some lab results. I'm not ever supposed to say this, but Coraline, you're going to be okay."

 **– Dr. Jeffrey Gingles -**

Sure he was a lowly resident, barely out of med school and just really getting to the meat of his career, but Jeffrey knew better than to tell someone they were going to be okay. Not only might you be lying, you might be making someone disappointed, which could lead to unpleasant things like lawsuits. Beyond facts and logic, there was superstition. Call it Murphy's Law or a jinx, but physicians did not make guarantees. He had been tired and a little stumped and he'd liked the patient, so he told her she'd be fine. Most patients were.

Coraline was not fine.

He had challenged Murphy, and Murphy's Law had left them a medical mystery. The entire internal medicine department had consulted on the case of the starving girl and no one had an answer. There were theories: autoimmune disease, cancer, pemphigus, exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, one fellow had even proposed plague. They'd spent a half million dollars on diagnostics. They still didn't have any answers, and she was fading away before their eyes.

A bottle of thick white liquid hung next to her bed providing sustenance into her veins that her stomach would not accept. Jeffrey hooked the paper chart off the foot of her bed and checked her last vitals.

"Hey Doc," Coraline turned her head his way, the rest of her body lying motionless, almost like an inert skeleton. "You guys figured this out yet?"

"You're still our leading medical mystery." Jeffrey held up his stethoscope. "Mind if I listen?"

"Still slow?" Coraline asked.

"It's steady though. I wish you'd let us call someone for you. Family or a friend? It has been a week."

"No." She swallowed and turned, too large, too bright eyes his way. "Doc, I want to tell you the truth, the whole truth. See, I don't think you can fix this. I'm being possessed by an evil spirit. My other mother told me. See I killed her and now I have to become her. But I don't want to, Doc. So, maybe you could get me a priest or maybe Ms. Spink to get it out? Ms. Spink and Ms. Forcible, they were a lot of help before, with their old candy."

"Hey, Coraline, can you focus? Do you know where you are? There's no such thing as evil spirits." Jeffrey touched her forehead and winced at the temperature, too cold. Her heart rate had dropped all the way to 35 beats per minute. He slapped the call button. "Code blue," he called moments before Coraline's eyes drifted shut and the heart monitor started to squeal.

* * *

"It's not your fault. If the board certified internists were stumped, the resident who took the case in is not the one who failed his patient." A nurse in bright pink scrubs patted Jeffery on the back and left him alone with the still-intubated corpse on the bed beside him.

Jeffrey slumped over, his head in his hands. Intellectually, he knew it wasn't his fault that Coraline had died. He and everyone else at the hospital had done their best. People died, and it wasn't always someone's fault. Emotionally, Coraline was his patient. He took her in and made promises that he did not keep.

Determined to at least find a family member to notify, Jeffrey sifted through his patient's purse until he found her phone. A fancy smartphone with a passcode access, he frowned at the locked device. Coraline had resolutely refused to contact any family or even a friend during her illness and she had left the emergency contact number on her intake form blank. Pondering the device for a long moment, Jeffrey applied Coraline's already cool index finger to the home button and it unlocked.

Jeffrey copied down the information for the contacts labeled mom and dad before just using the phone to call them. "Is this Ms. Jones? Hi, yes, my name is Dr. Gingles." He walked to the window, looking out over the rolling green hills of the hospital's grounds. "Are you able to come to the Legacy Hospital in downtown Portland? Yes, this is regarding your daughter."

A cool, boney hand twitched unnoticed on the bed.

 **– The Other Coraline -**

Coraline came back to herself slowly. Standing in the hospital room she had inhabited for the better part of a week, she tried to remember what had happened. A man lay unconscious or dead at her feet, and a terrible hunger gnawed at her insides.

"You need a trap," the other mother scolded. "There's no time to plan. It will have to be here at the hospital. Coraline, while you're still you. We have to make it a trap and a prison."

"I know," Coraline hissed, no longer in denial of what was happening or what she had to do. "The grounds. I know how to build it." She squinted and blinked, the world fading out of focus as her human eyes failed her. "Quickly." She snatched her satchel from the night table and slithered out the window. The other mother followed her, supporting her when she stumbled. The hunger had possessed so many before her and she could remember those old traps as though she had built them herself. The other mother had built a humane trap, a solid prison that had secured the hunger for over two hundred years while only costing three children their lives. She had tried very hard to make the children's death as pleasant as she could, food, games—joy in death. Other women had not borne the burden as effectively. One incarnation of the hunger had murdered three dozen children over a short seventy five year reign.

"You've not given yourself much time," the other mother complained again.

Coraline dug a pair of pruning shears out of her purse. She stumbled to the center of the hospital's garden, a hedged in section with several rose bushes. The magic, now a part of her and her memory, flowed out, building a world bounded by the hedges, a hidden garden. Coraline used the shears to blood her ritual and seal her world. She removed her now blind eyes with her sharp shears making them the core of her new universe, and with her still dripping shears she picked two perfect red roses.

The thorny rose stems sprouted and rooted into the raw wounds of her face. With her new eyes, Coraline's vision returned, red tinted but clear.

She was so very hungry.

Coraline plunged her fingers into the dirt, ten magical roots burrowing through the soil. Each root emerged in a different part of the hospital grounds, sprouting a perfect, fragrant red rose. It was far simpler than the last trap with its dolls and families and button eyes. Simple could be better though, she reasoned.

Simple could be perfect.

 **– Rebecca Sinclair -**

Rebecca hated the hospital; for a little girl who wasn't sick she spent entirely too much time in it. Her older brother was the sick one, always in and out getting treatments and tests and checkups. Unaware that the red bows in her pigtails had begun to unravel, Rebecca crept through the hospital's garden, looking at the plants and insects and flowers, glad to be free of the sterile white hospital halls for a moment anyway. She could still see her mother out of the corner of her eye, sitting on a bench and talking into her cell phone. Their plate lunches from the canteen occupied the bench next to her, scarcely touched.

A long row of yellow daffodils stretched along the sidewalk. Rebecca had tried smelling them but they didn't seem to have a scent. She wished she could pick a bouquet to carry in with her, something pretty to look at while they sat in uncomfortable chairs and waited for the doctors to give them Jimmy back again.

Instinctively, Rebecca knew that picking flowers in this kind of garden wouldn't be allowed. It was like church. You could only sort of play at churches (and hospitals). It was the kind of play that kept you clean and left the world around you perfect and untouched. Without giving it much thought, Rebecca realized that she couldn't see her mother anymore, but she could still hear her talking unintelligibly.

Among the uniform rows of yellow flowers, an interloper encroached. A fat, beautiful red bloom sprouted. Rebecca didn't know that roses like the one she now admired should only grow on well-tended bushes, or that the heavy head on the rose should have snapped the spindly green stem holding it aloft. She knew that the flower didn't belong there, so plucking it wouldn't really be wrong.

Rebecca crouched down, careful not to get her jeans dirty, and dropped her nose into the fat red bloom. The smell, sweet and soft, almost felt like a hug. Unaware of the magic of the rose, of the compulsion it had snared her into, she plucked the flower and held it close to her chest. Ignoring the thorns and the rips they tore in her hands, Rebecca buried her face in the rose, breathing in its perfectly intoxicating fragrance.

She didn't fight the cool, inhuman fingers that wrapped around her slumped form and pulled her seamlessly into the ground. Rebecca never felt the pain of her kidnapper's sharp pruning shears as they stole her eyes or dismembered her tiny body. She slept through the ending of her human life.

And when a small rose bush sprouted from the ritual of her death, Rebecca became a yellow blossom, blooming and blooming, never fading or falling.

The girl once called Coraline died for the second time there with Rebecca. Consuming the child she had trapped tied her to the hunger, and she purposefully shed the name of her birth. She wasn't Coraline and she wasn't the other mother.

She was the rose queen.

The rose queen tended her garden, and she ate any children foolish enough to snap the stem of one of her flowers.

The ragged hospital gown she had worn in her stumbling escape fell away, leaving her inhuman frame bare. Her feet sank into the dirt becoming roots and her hands reached to the sky forming sweeping branches. A sycamore tree, its bone white trunk draped in an impossible curtain of vining, red roses replaced the monstrous rose queen.

* * *

Author's Note: So it's ugly and dark and just rolls along until it ends without a catharsis, without a meaningful resolution. There was supposed to be final chapter from Mel Jones ' POV. But it didn't feel right.


End file.
